Fukushima Nuclear Cesium Fallout Now Equals 4,023 Hiroshima Bombs

New TEPCO estimates calculate the amount of Cesium leaked from Fukushima is 24 times higher than previously thought and equal to 4,023 Hiroshima bombs.

Last August the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) estimated 15,000 tera becquerels of cesium radiation had leaked from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in Japan.

One tera becquerel equals 1 trillion becquerels.

Last year, when TEPCO released of estimates of the level of cesium radiation leaked from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, the Telegraph reported the leaks ‘equal 168 Hiroshima bombs’.

Fukushima caesium leaks ‘equal 168 Hiroshimas’
Japan’s government estimates the amount of radioactive caesium-137 released by the Fukushima nuclear disaster so far is equal to that of 168 Hiroshima bombs.

[…]

The amount of caesium-137 released since the three reactors were crippled by the March 11 quake and tsunami has been estimated at 15,000 tera becquerels, the Tokyo Shimbun reported, quoting a government calculation.

That compares with the 89 tera becquerels released by “Little Boy”, the uranium bomb the United States dropped on the western Japanese city in the final days of World War II, the report said.

[…]

Source: The Telegraph

The Japan Times reports that the total amount of combined radioactive substances released into the atmosphere is 900,000 tera becquerels of radiation.

That is less than 1/5th of the total amount of radiation leaked into the atmosphere from the Chernobyl disaster which is thought to be 5.2 million tera becquerels.

However, the comparison is misleading for several reasons the first being TEPCO has not released an accurate estimate of the total amount of radiation leaked from Fukushima.

TEPCO’s new estimates only account for radiation released into the atmosphere during the first month following the March 11th disaster and do not include the amount of radiation leaked into the water.

TEPCO’s newly revised estimates of the Fukushima leak are also not all-inclusive and do not cover the entire date range from the start of the disaster.

The estimate of the total atmosphere release is based on data collected from between March 12 to 31, 2011,

TEPCO states the amount of radiation released into the atmosphere in April and during the following months is likely to be only 1% of the amount released in March.

That amount is considered to be ‘insignificant’ and is not included in the new estimate.

The estimated amount of radiation leaked into Pacific Ocean was extrapolated from data collected from March 26 to September 30, 2011.

TEPCO warned this data was collected from a ‘small amount of data acquired in a limited area’ and further warned ‘further data still needs to be collected to review the validity’ of their estimates.

The new estimate also did not provide figures for the amount of radiation leaked into the water pits that run beneath the Fukushima’s nuclear reactors or for radiation leaked into contaminated water that TEPCO has collected into storage tanks.

Last June, TEPCO estimated the amount of radiation leaked into the underground water pits to be up to nearly to two times higher than the amount of radiation released into the atmosphere.

Since then hundreds of millions of gallons of the radioactive water has released into the Pacific Ocean through a combination of leaks at the nuclear plant and from TEPCO dumping it into the ocean after being urged to do so by the United States government.

Higgins News Network – HNN Headline News

FAIR USE NOTICE. Many of the stories on this site contain copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making this material available in an effort to advance the understanding of environmental issues, human rights, economic and political democracy, and issues of social justice. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in Section 107 of the US Copyright Law which contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. If you wish to use such copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use'...you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.